Format Breakdown - Physical & Digital

Unit Sales

Note : Units are defined by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) as to equal 1 album sale, 15 track sales, and 1500 streams

Revenue

Not Adjusted

Adjusted for inflation

Revenue Breakdown by Format

-Assessed from total revenue (adjusted for inflation) years 1975-2019

  • “Other” section comprises of DVD Audio, Kiosk, Other Digital, Other Tapes, SACD, Synchronization, SoundExchange Distributions, Ringtones & Ringbacks, Other Ad-Supported Streaming, On-Demand Streaming (Ad-Supported).

Comments

With comparison of revenue vs unit sales, we can observe overall trends in the lifespan of the American Music Industry. The industry first boomed in the early 1970’s with physical LPs being the leading format to bring in revenue. Since then we see the rise and fall of various formats of music. A large peak in both revenue and unit sales signifies the height of the American Music Industry in the late 1990’s - early 2000’s. Unit sales reached an all-time peak in 2012 from Downloads, but the contrast between the unit-to-revenue ratio in 1999 to 2012 highlights the decrease in monetary value for units over the past 20 years. Additionally, the rapid increase in unit sales from 2015 - 2019 from Paid Subscriptions in contrast its revenue displays the same decrease in monetary value for unit sales.

*Using public data from RIAA